Thanks to the Year of Italian Culture in the US, Italy and United States are even more closely tied. The first part of the initiative presented a full calendar of cultural events involving art, music, theater, sciences, and design in major US cities, such as Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In this interview, Ambassador of Italy Claudio Bisogniero tells us about the satisfactions, difficulties and successes encountered so far and talks about the projects and events prepared for the upcoming months. One of them involving the unveiling a Hellenistic Greek sculpture dated to around 330 B.C titled Boxer of Quirinal, which will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on loan from the collection of the National Museum of Rome.